Vanity Fare — Ann Birstein

It's the mid-1970s, a time of political and social turmoil. Watergate is on everybody's mind, and the women's movement is the subject of much contention. Lish Lasker, a young novelist, unexpectedly meets her heroine, Charlotte Burns, an older writer and the author of the groundbreaking feminist work Vanity Fare, at a New York cocktail party. Lish is married to a Barnard College professor and feels stuck in her lowly and unsung roles of faculty wife and housewife on Manhattan's upper west side. To her surprise, immediately after their meeting, glamorous Charlotte befriends her. Lish is fascinated by Charlotte's luxurious existence in the Hamptons and Park Avenue and her connections with literary high life. But then a series of dramatic revelations upset their lives.